


Tonight When I Return…

by Miss_M



Category: Metropolis (1927)
Genre: Angst and Porn, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Missing Scene, Purple Prose, Sexual Content, all the machine metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25563514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: Freder doesn’t wait till tonight.
Relationships: Freder Fredersen/Josaphat
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Rare Pairs Exchange 2020





	Tonight When I Return…

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CousinShelley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts).



> I own nothing.

Freder’s nerves vibrated like the parts of some great engine – pistons pumping, gears throwing off sparks. His mind raced, and his hands seemed unable to keep still. He paced Josaphat’s sitting room in his borrowed workingman’s overalls, talking and gesticulating, touching anything within reach – the polished surface of a table, the back of a padded chair, Josaphat’s sleeve…

“The things I’ve seen, Josaphat! The great Heart Machine swallowing men whole! The hordes of the working dead, yet not dead, for they all had a pulse and a beating heart and a mind like yours or mine…”

Josaphat’s hand on his arm arrested him in his pacing to and fro. Josaphat’s hand, the soft hand of an office worker, a master of numbers and abstracts, proved yet strong enough to seize him by his elbow and stop him in midstride, his torrent of words run dry as though a tap had been turned off. 

“Please, Freder, sit. You are exhausted, your mind is disordered with upset.” Josaphat’s kind face, so close, his brow knit with worry. 

Freder’s restless hand found a peaceful perch at last when he let it alight on Josaphat’s pale cheek. Josaphat started a little at the intrusion, but Freder smiled. “Do you know, Josaphat, that I have often thought that yours is the only kind face I know? Not my father’s, certainly, nor that of any of my friends…”

His friends! The other members of the Club of the Sons had taught him some interesting things, but none of them had Freder’s trust. To none of them did his thoughts ever turn in search of succor or comfort, only amusement and release.

Josaphat looked concerned. “Your expression, Freder… Are you well?” 

Freder forced his disordered mind to focus and smiled, he hoped softly, at his friend, his one true friend. “I am a little tired, Josaphat. But I have such clarity!” he hurried to add before dear, kind Josaphat could tell him again to sit down and rest. “I see now what I should have seen long before.”

Josaphat took him gently by both arms and peered into his face, and Freder was both touched and unnerved at the faith that Josaphat always seemed to place in him. Him! A grown-up child, a rich man’s son, when Josaphat himself was worth twice the entire Club of the Sons!

“What do you see, Freder?” Josaphat’s voice was hushed with something like awe. Or perhaps desperation: he had lost everything when Freder’s father dismissed him from employ, and now he had been sucked into Freder’s mad adventure through nothing but his faith in Freder. 

Freder took Josaphat by the arms in return, so that they stood very nearly embracing, and he smiled again. “I see that you are entirely human, Josaphat, though your eyes glow like arc lamps. I see that our world is on the brink of a great change, when mighty and low will be made alike, and you will never again need to bow before the likes of me or my father.”

Freder let go of Josaphat and took a minute step back, so that he might kneel down, on the plush carpet, at Josaphat’s feet. He felt Josaphat’s agitated breath ruffle his hair and spoke before Josaphat could do so:

“Let me bow to you instead, Josaphat, for I know of no one who deserves it more.”

He knew that this did not quite fit with his new awareness of the inherent equality of workingman and master, nor did it entirely hold up against the wonder he felt when faced with the blond angel from the workers’ city, but he let the moment carry him. He let his hands rise and alight on the front of Josaphat’s black trousers, a little rumpled after a half-day at the office, a different kind of workingman’s uniform. 

“ _Freder…_ ”

Josaphat’s voice was an avalanche, it nearly buried Freder and made his arms drop down into his lap, but his head lifted up, light as a bird, and Josaphat’s expression steadied him despite looking pieced together from the shards of half a dozen individual expressions.

“The hands must carry out what both the heart and the head decide,” Freder said far more calmly than he felt. He had already undone all the little buttons – he’d learned how to do some things very well at the Club of the Sons, oh yes – and now he gave in to his heart and his mind’s joint commands and pressed his face to the opening in the black cloth. 

He inhaled deeply, and Josaphat made a noise like his airways were closing up. Freder put his hand inside, drew out his prize, and set about showing Josaphat what he had learned, both by doing and by having done to him by men whose faces all looked the same, their father’s names their main distinguishing features. 

Freder’s lips slid easily up and down Josaphat’s shaft, and he thrilled inside at the thought that he’d hardly had to do anything to make Josaphat his accomplice. His heart and his mind hadn’t been the only ones wanting this, it seemed.

Josaphat was panting, his hand alighting for only a moment at a time, now on Freder’s hair, now on his cheek, before it grew bold and cupped his jaw, guiding him a little as he labored over Josaphat’s pleasure as over his own. Josaphat’s fingers slid under Freder’s jaw, pressing a little at the soft underside, so that Josaphat was feeling his own hardness both from inside Freder’s mouth and from the outside, with his fingers. Freder wondered if Josaphat had ever imagined this, just this, when he was alone at night.

Freder’s member was a stiff lever in his borrowed clothes, but he wished only to show Josaphat, show him what little Freder had to show for himself before this day, when he’d learned so many things and grown so bold. Or bold enough. He quickened his pace, all the gears and pulleys of his muscles and tendons increasing their joint efforts, his head moving with a well-oiled and practiced glide back and forth, and back and forth. Josaphat made a noise like a sob, like failing to catch his breath, and his hand fell away from Freder’s jaw to seize the hair on the back of his head and hold him still while Josaphat spilled down his throat. Josaphat’s soft, strong hand in Freder’s hair made him gulp around Josaphat’s shaft, which pulled that choked-off sob from Josaphat again, which forced Freder to rub at himself through his overalls, despite wanting to only give.

Josaphat’s hands cupped his face like a chalice while Josaphat pulled away from him. Freder could feel Josaphat’s arc-light gaze like the sun on his face, but he kept his eyes closed and licked his lips, overcome with how vulnerable the act of giving made him. It had never used to, when this had been but passing fun or a spur-of-the-moment competition. Once he’d taken on four men for a bet, one in each hand, one in his mouth, and one inside him, and risen, laughing and sticky, and called for a drink afterward. Now he dared not open his eyes.

He heard the rustle of Josaphat’s clothes, felt the air displaced by Josaphat’s movement, felt Josaphat’s warm breath on his face. 

“Freder, let me,” Josaphat said, taking Freder by the shoulder and pushing his hand, which was still rubbing at his crotch listlessly, away. 

“You’ve knelt to me and my kind all your life, Josaphat,” Freder said. “I wanted to kneel to you for once.”

“We are kneeling together, my brother,” Josaphat replied, startling Freder into opening his eyes. Josaphat’s face, still a crazy patchwork of expressions, foremost among them his habitual kindness and something else, something Freder didn’t recognize at once: amusement, though not at his, Freder’s expense. 

“My friend,” Josaphat said and undid the front of Freder’s overalls. 

He lacked Freder’s habitual skill with another’s member, but even so, Freder let his eyes drift shut again, let Josaphat hold him close and tug on him with his soft hand. In his mind, he overlaid the memory of being spread-eagled among four men with another kind of image, one he’d cultivated in his few nighttime moments alone: himself holding his knees up with his hands, spread-eagling himself, while Josaphat loomed over him, his pale face beaded with sweat and his eyes focused on Freder, searing him. Josaphat’s body, still a mystery to Freder, meeting his, the slap of flesh on flesh, the imagined stretch that made Freder clench on empty now while Josaphat tugged him closer and pulled him to the brink of his pleasure.

“Josaphat,” Freder gasped. “Josaphat, tonight when I return…”

Josaphat stopped his mouth with his own, their teeth and tongues clumsy but eager – the Club of the Sons went in for tugging and sucking, not kissing – and Freder clung to Josaphat’s shoulders, bunching the gabardine of his morning coat in his fists, while Josaphat’s hand pulled his pleasure out of him in a great burst, a bright white light filling up Freder’s head and his chest, the engine of his body overloading for a moment with everything he had wanted and never dared to say. _How silly to never just say_ , Freder thought while he shook helplessly in his surrender, and Josaphat’s arm around his shoulders held him up, Josaphat’s hand wringing him out of himself, the essence out of pretense.


End file.
